Caliboy in Brooklyn: Summer is Fire Season

Word came down that the small community of cabins known as Mill Creek has been given the evacuation order. The Fire, formerly known as the Dixie fire, is not exactly bearing down on the wooded collection of summer homes.

It is close enough, though, that due to the fact that there are exactly two exit roads with size constraints means NOW is the time to go, when the going's mellow. One direction down the Only Road (CA Rt 172) leads to CA 36. East on 36 goes to Chester, and has been closed for a bit. West on 36 heads back to Red Bluff, the valley, and I-5, but passes over Morgan Summit. The fire is at the base of Morgan mountain, and it the situation gets squirrely and erratic, it may force the closure of that pass, meaning 36 westbound from our Only Road will also be closed, making that direction down 172 untenable.

The other direction down 172 heads west to Mineral, and meets up 36 on the other side of Morgan Summit. This sounds better than the first scenario. The only problem is that this road is a constant back and forth of archetypical "mountain road" and is at best a lane and a half wide, with a few hundred foot drop on the downslope side to the eponymous Mill Creek. This view is calmly blocked by dense forest, so drivers never really realize it.

If the Morgan Summit pass gets closed, that leaves only the trek over the Mineral Summit, mentioned above, on a tiny lane while fire engines are oncoming traffic.

I mention all of this because this is where we are. This is the future, and that future is now. Back in 1990 we visited Yellowstone Park, and the ravages of the fire of 1988 were still very apparent. Not too much was charred and black and barren, and frankly much was green cover growth. But that was just it: green cover growth, grasses and mosses. Some stick like trees in the burned areas.

Thirty years later, in 2018, the town of Paradise was almost completely consumed by the Camp fire. A major calamity, for sure, but three years after that and the town of Greenwood has succumbed to the same fate. The Dixie fire still rages. Nearly 200 million Americans are at risk of extreme heat this weekend alone. This is what we'll be living with for, er, uh, ever? Forever? Yeah, yeah, that's it.

Anyway...

We had some great times, trying to get out of the cabin and explore in the few hours when the air quality wasn't dangerous.

That first Thursday we headed out in a lightly smoky morning and hiked through the forest for a bit like my brother and I used to do:

The glens were hazy, and we realized later that we probably shouldn't have been out.

Friday was the bad day, with the smoke keeping us inside most of the day. Just look at this sadly familiar eerie orange glow:

And the morning sky looked like sunset on Endor:

We headed back to Sacrament to see Norm and Holly and their kids, Dan and Lupita, my mom and Richard---all the peeps. It was very cool. We returned on Monday evening to the Cabin, and the next day was met with drizzle in the morning:

Later on we headed down to the creek, eh, Mill Creek (itself), and felt like having swim shoes and trunks would have been good:

My mom showed up and spent a few days with her and her fella, Richard. Some days were okay, some days were less so. We tried to make the most of it.

We never went to the Park, and by that I mean Lassen Volcanic National Park, and that was because it didn't make sense. It was just never nice enough air to do the hikes we're still trying for.

We did head to the general area where Ishi, possibly the last indigenous American undiscovered by white society, lived until he was, eh, discovered by white society in the early 1900s. It was surprisingly close. We drove for a minute to the basic entrance, and then followed the dirt road for what felt like a half an hour.

There were cool meadows:

And mini-ravines that barely look like anything here:

As we were finishing up, Corrie and Cass went off down a deer path. The plan was to follow the deer path down to the creek and then head up the creek back to where the main erstwhile logging road met it, while Camille and I would walk the logging road back to the rendezvous point.

After sitting with the toddler tied to my chest for a half an hour, I could hear voices off in the distance, and after some back and forth hollering, we were able to put eyes on each other. I ended up getting a picture of them coming in out of the cut, with a deer blind up in a tree: